The Heart of It

What a visionary and breathtaking year!

Many of us would like to say a good bye to the year that was. I for one can’t do that less forsake the great good I held with Theo. What we shared across our last threshold of special seasons was wondrously close in both physical time and spiritual space. His love still shines like a beautiful heart song. All the life riches I need to know are contained within it. It is also to say that life events are largely neither all good or all bad. It is more the way we give our lens to things that has us learn something and that creates our possibility.

I shall as strongly cherish 2020 as a wonderful year, if not a beautiful one, for it became a universal turning point for our being more in tune with our true spiritual wealth. What truly in life makes us poor? What makes us rich? We are all experiencing some shift in perspective. And maybe in reaching in because of that shift, we are beginning to universally embrace that home is really where the heart is.

Home is where the heart is. This is something Theo has always wished for me on walks along our yellow brick road, and something Dorothy grew to earn. Home is where the heart is. This is how Theo’s great “Lightness” of Being informed me. Every day we can lengthen light. We can lengthen light. We are each a movement for love and we can lengthen light.

Theo loved wearing a Super Cape. He was also a great fan of Harry Potter and enjoyed the read aloud. The way in which Theo sighed against my chest as we both learned about Harry’s lightning scar, or the way his ears perked up and his nose twitched close to my heart to hear about Harry’s discovery of a talent for flying on broomsticks and starring in his school house’s wizarding world of Quidditch games, is something you don’t soon forget. Something Theo appreciated the superpower prowess and “magical development” we all have.

Our heart choices show us who we truly are far more than our abilities. Maybe this is why Theo so loved Harry Potter. It is also what I learned to identify when Theo played Toto to my Dorothy on every path we took on our forest summit walks. He had a way of showing me that there is no place like home. All to say that a superhero mask in all the comic books and movies typically covers the eyes; and yet Theo understood there are other kinds of heroes to be made.

The New Superhero

I think Theo would take great delight in knowing that a new kind of superhero has been born in the very year he left his great spark on Earth. The physical superhero covers his eyes. The spiritual superhero covers his mouth and nose. He and she must breathe in differently. He and she must sense and assess slowly, patiently. He and she must talk and use his power of speech differently. If we are separated visually, we also learn to reach for the heart.

Perhaps this new age of the mask is a visual representation of encouragement in how far we can go to deeper matters of understanding, connection, empathy, courtesy and mutual respect. We listen in new ways. We broaden more. If the physical superhero wears an eye mask, Something Theo has smiled to the great spiritual superhero of loving energy that my family and I — just as yours— would now become in covering our mouths to be there for each other, and to have rely on other antennae: the speech and the virtue of the frequency we extend.

This year it is as warmly refreshing and alighting that we are joined to something much greater than our superfluous wants. It is as if the gateway of the eye we expose above our masks have moved us away from our I. We have become more of a we over a sea of I wants. Now we wish. I find it deeply moving that we do. We wish for simple things. Most of what we all wish for is genuine and common as to have become singular and paramount. Our wishes have supported each other for health, security, safety, connection and kindness. Maybe this movement for universal love is where our superhuman powers truly lie.

Missing You

The separation from our familiar habits also forces each and every one of us to reach into our hearts in a different way one to the other. Like you, I miss people. I miss their vibrational temperature. And yet, something in me oddly feels closer to everyone. Though quieter, I feel much deeper connection.

I cherish a year in which I have been given time to really ask myself: What do I cherish about this person I now miss? What special soul attribute and combination of distinct loving feature unique to this person and no other has me experience good feeling or be heightened in some appreciative awareness? What unique vibrational frequency in that person am I longing for and valuing in my heart?

I as much experience more affection and a deeper love for people I may have not fully considered so “essential” to my life makeup, only to notice that they are, and that the bond of appreciation is deeper than I ever imagined. This year, I as strongly miss people I don’t always as often see to hardly at all, or those I don’t get to talk to more when we do cross paths. I wonder how they are doing. I have sometimes invited them to my table to be with me in my heart. Or, watch a movie with me or sit in my garden or come on a walk with me. My heart smiles to them and sends love to where they are, or rehearses a conversation or a moment of being in the same room that we shared. I thank it. Time gives space that I as much feel love for those who I may have experienced as bothersome or unhelpful or brash or like an enemy to my spirit, too. How can I feel love and a deep caring for them, but I do.

Young or older, may we never lose sight of the shift we have gained in perspective and how that shift of missing something or longing for something with a deeply sincere gratitude has opened a new gateway for our heart. I often wonder: Will we make certain such distinction leads us when things normalize and resume?

Just Breathe

Surely, every person has a good frequency to offer that in the end counts. Not one energy can really ever be taken for granted. Our shared vulnerability of this year has deepened our compassion to see all the pains and wounds and inconsistencies and wide variety of ways in which we all express ourselves as a sacred space that is really seeking some kindness and that just needs love. Every life speck is deserving of love. This is true for everyone no matter the wide variety of life inheritance we experience and have.

When we go to the optician to check our eyes we want to make sure we have good vision. That we see 20/20. Sometimes we wear glasses to make it better. If 2020 is the year of vision and a year of widening our perspective, it means we all have been asking ourselves what we could do and handle differently going forward with the benefit of hindsight, if you will. How do you want to reframe your year? The one to soon follow? How will you and I continue to hold out for the light?

Our spirits are boundless light beings that came to exist on Earth and shape it for a goodness beyond a visible paradigm of our emotional wants and needs. This past year marked a universal spiritual ascent into the realm of what most matters. And how curious and mysterious that we have all been asked to stop for an invisible speck shaped like a sun-star in this visionary stay-at-home-to-be-with-your-hearts kind of year.

Under the microscope, what we fear can infect us looks like a “halo” around the iris of the eye. It also looks like a crown or a circle with many arms, hence its name. And yet no matter our personal story of vulnerability, we have shown what happens for a good when hearts and eyes and arms come together for a considerate and compassionate purpose. We each in our own way across this past “crowning” year have grown to see great vibrational and consistent purpose in harmony, love, caring, and togetherness. And here is the beauty: we have ourselves!

To survive this new terrain, we have likely considered ways of being better to ourselves, to our own thoughts, to our actions, to each other. We have shown each other how things can improve quite quickly when we all join to that. The sun star has in effect solarized us. Our mask has enlightened every one of us to the power of a personal, familial and universal consideration. A mask may go so far as to remind us that we are being withheld— and yet, for the superhero, the mask more loudly tells the heart that we love. We love, we love, we came here to love, and we breathe. We breathe. How lucky we are to just breathe.

Seeing Beyond the Sun Star

How extraordinary it all is then that our universal reflection joins all the more deeply because of an invisible sun star. A sun’s corona is normally only visible during a total solar eclipse, and when it is seen as an irregularly shaped pearly glow surrounding the darkened disk of the moon. At year’s end, all of life sits in the cusp of the solstice. And what if this virus came to all humanity as an opportunity to raise our standard, enlighten our perspective, moderate and elevate our hearts to a higher realm of behaviour, and in such a way that we avow to go forward with a respect and deeper love for each other’s imaginary crowns?

The contagion may be unseen and travel far, but so does the contagion of caring and kindness. Life, like things, becomes delicate and fragile. They get destroyed. But we learned this year: we really care. We have each in our own way become a spiritual superhero who shows how he or she cares. It suggests that we must continue to use our eyes and our mouths to help get us where we want to go a lot more kindly. Gladly, kindness as a force is more contagious and more resistant.

We are entering the fourth quarter of a universal spiritual ascent just as the solstice heralds new days that begin to extend. The solstice marks the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day in the Southern Hemisphere. No matter where you live or what you celebrate, the solstice reminds us to honour our perseverance and to extend the light.

A solstice is a signal of a powerful transition point between seasons that is impossible to ignore. A solstice means “when the sun stood still”. Its tilt is at its maximum, and the sun must literally take a momentary pause before it reverses direction. The solstice is a time of quiet energy and it is as tied to a personal awakening for the body and soul. No matter where you inhabit your special space on earth, this is a time meant to reflect and recreate yourself.

We have all joined for many significant touchdowns throughout this 2020 year. What by way of goals have we really lost? What aspects of our spirit – so the seat of our emotions and character— have we significantly gained? As we set our intentions, what shall the superhero in each of us soar toward and play? What shall the hero in us agree to shed? How shall we take the victory to our homes? And how will we continue to use our new insight for what truly binds us? Could there be a more perfect way for all of mankind to enter a calendar’s New Year?

Bless Your Heartspeak

It is universal that we all wish for peace, love and a nourishing health for everyone at this calendar time of our year. We so sincerely wish it as to be true. We also tend to take a pause around now. Every corner of the earth stops in some way. World over, we rest from the ordinary, we contemplate the extraordinary, and we celebrate light in some way. We challenge our orientation, like the sun.

Somehow though, this past year we have been vibrationally aligned to an implicit practice of goodwill and hope most every day, and in ways we couldn’t or wouldn’t believe we could venture before.  Something within us has always shone out a brave, bright and caring light for our loved ones and the stranger. We have carried and cared for each other’s wishes and fears. We have as strongly shown each other that with little movement but great shift we can be quite extraordinary. In being asked to distance ourselves from each other everywhere we are or anywhere we go by six feet of separation, we as much have brought new meaning to the truth that I am bound as you are bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. If a contagion can cause so much reverberation, I can only imagine how much the contagion of kindness can continue to do in invisible ways, too.

I will forever thank 2020. It has been a year of paradox and inspiration. Clearly, human grace and sunlight can dispel darkness and confusion; and when we choose to see clearly, our heart can light up a universal sense of home. We each in our own unique way can continue to more actively cultivate the joy of being in our hearts and being more appreciative to the simple wishes our life visions mutually share— so not solely defining ourselves by what we do in our roles— but appreciating a lot more deeply the love we really do have for our family great and small as much as each other and the singularity of each I am.

We all know that an inner radiance behind the eye shines. “Great chaos leads to great organization” says my dear teacher in Master Ou. Every movement in the Universe is a movement toward love. If there is one thing I learned well from Theo it is also that. Theo stood by me across a great period of healing years and let me know this is as  true in situations that appear on the surface to be the opposite of loving. Yes, a virus is contagious— but love and a universal togetherness can be even more contagious. It can be so contagious as to strip away anxiety and let us know the greater dreams of which we are all made.

“The cloud can screen the sun but cannot cover it; even when the sky is full of thick clouds the sun is still shining vigorously. Though for a time, it cannot illuminate every corner of the land, it dispels dark clouds constantly. The light is about to shine through— who can stop it?”       — Master Ou, The Path of Life

Wishing you Love,

a Light-Filled Season of Happiness and Health,

and a Safe, Well-Loved New Year,

Photography by Marina Mashaal

The holiday “light’” season, the winter solstice period, and the end of a Gregorian calendar year is a good time to reflect.

Feel free to check out the progression of blogs I have written across the last five years.

Optionally, and/or if you weren’t able to make it, I have attached the link to a December talk I presented on “The Power of Calm”.

To fully enjoy the audio presentation, first click

Leonard Cohen – String Reprise/Treaty 

Then 

WATCH MARINA’S LECTURE HERE

To access any one of the progression of my heart speak writes,

kindly click on Blog

To better honour the superhero I have in Theo,

I have provided the links to three earlier writes his heart speak sweetly starred in, or greatly inspired.

The Festival of Lights

The Invitation of Light and Dark

Dandelions and Candy Canes